AuthorTopic: Alttp - Horn of Balance (Read 209520 times)

Hmm, your link to the demo seems to be broken. When I click on it I get this URL http://"http//www.savefile.com/files/2051862", which is obviously incorrect. but when I remove the http://"...." and follow the link I end up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP. It seems as if wikipedia has highjacked your link.

Pots (and enemies) tend to respawn themselves too in LTTP; I'm not sure if that happens as soon as you re-enter the room, or after you've been through a few other rooms.

The pots respawn after you exit the room and reenter it. Enemies respawn once you change floors. For example: You kill all the enemies on 1F and they stay killed as long as you remain on 1F. As soon as you go to 2F or B1 and then return to 1F the enemies respawn themselves again. There are 2 exceptions:1) Enemies dropped in a hole and not slain, will return once Link leaves the room. It won't wait until you change floors. 2) Rooms that require you to slay all the enemies to open the doors, remain slain even if you change floors. They will only return once Link leaves the dungeon and goes back to the overworld.

I hope to play the latest demo soon. I know I said to do it sooner, but I just didn't have the time for it.

Well; Neik's sorta right. Correct in the times they respawn, but not quite understanding of why that happens :p

When you hit a new floor in lttp, it's loading a new array of rooms. It's the same transition as if you were to go from the overworld into a cave, or something along those lines. When the game has to load a new map array, the killed enemy values reset.

By the way, you may know me under a different name. I don't check these boards much anymore and didn't know you were on here!

Nickslayer? Or maybe Chris (since there's no mentioning of stuff NOT in this demo)? I don't really give yoyogames forum as much attention as this one.

Anyway. On to the posts. I'll just go through it at a pretty random order.

1) Dissappearing rupees etc. Excellent suggestion. They normally dissappear on there own (just wait a bit), but moving from room to room pauses that. I hadn't even considered that would happen, but I can fix it by not dissabling the items in the old room. This will let them dissappear in real time. Those extra active objects aren't a lot compaired to the couple of hundred others active per room. I'll put it on my to do list for this weekend.

2) Respawning enemies/containers. Like the original game I work with separate area's containing multiple rooms. This will respawn enemies and containers when you move between gamemaker rooms. So when moving outside or to another floor. This will include ALL regular enemies. It doesn't have to be exactly like the original.Right now the containers follow the same principle. If you'll remember pots respawn but the contents do not. I would be broken otherwise anyway, giving you limitless amounts of items from a single pot near a door. It would be more realistic to just keep it as it is, so I'm not going to change it (for now). I'll consider it though.

3) The transitions are done by taking links current location and a target location. The distance is divided by the number of frames it takes and link moves accordingly. If you got caught in between two doorways my first guess would be that I made a mistake setting the target location or accidentally moved a transition object. Was this a one time occurrence for that particular doorway? The distance should be about 2 pixels longer than it absolutely has to be. At what door did this happen?

4) There were some bugs in the starting menu but I already fixed those shortly after I posted the demo. I though it was after demo 0.7.2 but I guess it was this one. I see if I can round of some things this weekend and post a bugfree demo.

5) Cannonballs it is. I'm not changing the name in the game because that's more work than it's worth. So, error messages aside, it's now cannonballs.

6) The spin attack already uses both sounds, just not very noticeable. I haven't played the game for a long time but I didn't really feel like it sounded right. Maybe the second sound should be used not at the beginning of the sword swinging but a little later? Anybody else have any comments on this subject?

7) The masking of pots is something I'll look into. I kinda like the walking around them. It shouldn't interfere with your ability to grab them, but I could be wrong. I'll make a note on my list.

PS. One more bit of advice I just remembered: perhaps you should enlarge the object mask of the pots. It seems a bit too easy to "corner-cut" around them - you almost need to be dead-centre to walk in and pick them up.

Well, I started working on this today, but it seems there wasn't much to fix. The easy "corner-cutting" will stay but that will not effect the ability to pick containers up. Moving uses precise sprite. Using the action button only checks the bounding boxes. So there's not much for me to improve. It'll all fall into place.

The issue of dissappearing items has been fixed and I've added another room, pressure plates and conditional doors since my last post. Unless someone specificly requests it I won't release a fixed demo. At least not untill I get a little bit more additions finished. Which will hopefully be in about two or three weeks.

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Update:Scratch that last bit. I've almost finished the regular cyclops enemy, but it just doesn't feel right yet. I'll probably post a demo tonight. Maybe you've guys got some suggestions.

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2nd Update:A new demo is now uploaded. The changes aren't too mayor. I'm just looking to get some new features tested. In particular the new enemy, which you can find outside and near the giant chest inside.

If you find anything wrong within the demo or you have other suggestions then be sure to leave a comment. Even if I don't adjust things directly (like the masking of the pots) that doesn't mean I haven't made a note of it for later.

I took me a while but I figured out what was missing. Right before an enemy goes up in smoke you see two slashes across there body. The screenshot below shows exactly that (in my personal version, so don't mind the blue etc). It may need some more work though. Also I have yet to think up a way of inverting the enemy sprites when they get hit. Maybe it's not even possible. Oh well.

This is not supposed to happen, right? It happened quite frequently to me and got pretty annoying. I'm playing on Vista, does that matter in any way?

I found this game really good, with all the sounds, the original music, and the graphic effects. I especially liked the spin attack. Good was also, that I didn't experience any gameplay bugs. The game really felt like the original LttP.

I have some suggestions though:

You should be able to close menus with the keys you use for opening them.

It would also be nice if you could pick up things like rupees with your sword.

Pots should have square collision in my opinion. If you were walking against a row of pots you could get stuck between two pots. I mean, you could still move out again, but square collision would be better I think. You couldn't pick up pots either, could you? But you probably plan to add that anyway.

Another thing was no knockback for Link, but same as above, I think.

Also I found that the 'Royal Shrine' text vanished too quickly to read, if you aren't prepared for it.

By the way, you may know me under a different name. I don't check these boards much anymore and didn't know you were on here!

Nickslayer? Or maybe Chris (since there's no mentioning of stuff NOT in this demo)? I don't really give yoyogames forum as much attention as this one.

Well my real name is Chris, but I haven't been to the YoYoGames forum in ages. There I was known as HelpTheWretched.

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1) Dissappearing rupees etc. Excellent suggestion. They normally dissappear on there own (just wait a bit), but moving from room to room pauses that. I hadn't even considered that would happen, but I can fix it by not dissabling the items in the old room. This will let them dissappear in real time.

This solution would be unlike the real LTTP engine because then you could exit and reenter a room to find the items still there. But, if you ask me, that's an improvement. I mean, why not let the rupees have their due time to be picked up? I'm willing to bet that this particular "staple" of the Zelda series began as a technical limitation before it was accepted as a regular part of gameplay.

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2) Respawning enemies/containers. Like the original game I work with separate area's containing multiple rooms. This will respawn enemies and containers when you move between gamemaker rooms. So when moving outside or to another floor. This will include ALL regular enemies. It doesn't have to be exactly like the original.Right now the containers follow the same principle. If you'll remember pots respawn but the contents do not. I would be broken otherwise anyway (...)

The containers is a valid point. The only reason I'd consider having their contents respawn would be if the dungeon design required you to break it a certain number of times to obtain X items, or if there would be some kind of puzzle that involves getting their contents in the correct order. In the case of the former, it would also be important to make it somehow puzzling to get back to the container in the first place. In other words, I'd keep it as-is unless you really want to go through that trouble to make something unique.

As I recall mentioning (though maybe I didn't), I hadn't studied how/when enemies respawn. I'd suggest respawning them after traveling to a certain number of other rooms, rather than just when changing Game Maker rooms, IF the dungeons are rather large. Walking around through large floors with all the enemies beaten could get boring. A thought just occurred: it would be neat to actually SEE them respawn via some magic power, rather than just being there when you walk in.

Also consider the overworld; most if not all enemies respawn when you change areas.

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3) The transitions are done by taking links current location and a target location. The distance is divided by the number of frames it takes and link moves accordingly. If you got caught in between two doorways my first guess would be that I made a mistake setting the target location or accidentally moved a transition object. Was this a one time occurrence for that particular doorway? The distance should be about 2 pixels longer than it absolutely has to be. At what door did this happen?

With "target location" transitions, yes, extending the target just a bit might be the best fix, but he already seems to hit the target location a few pixels farther than expected, so it must be some other kind of bug. It was a one time occurrence for that door, but Link went back and forth a good 8 times or so before I freed him. It was the door between the room just after the 1st key, and the room to the left that's just a horizontal bridge with 3 pots.

If you're using division by frames to control Link's movement during the transition, then perhaps it was a perpetual rounding error. I'm not sure how your walking code works, but if it allows Link to be at a non-integer (x,y) position at any given time, then I'd suggest also rounding off his position before the transition begins.

This just in: I reenacted the bug by dashing at the upper part of the doorway so that Link passes through but still makes the collision noise. Took many tries but I made it work 3 times. Perhaps since Link is supposed to bounce back, the target position ends up getting pulled back a bit.

Also, where the 9 pots are just above that door, sometime in the midst of cutting them up and pressing D (I think) repeatedly to get infinite blue rupees out of one, Link's sword somehow got moved an entire 2 blocks to the left and 1 down. It stayed that way through every movement until quitting.

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4) There were some bugs in the starting menu but I already fixed those shortly after I posted the demo.

Cool.

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5) Cannonballs it is. I'm not changing the name in the game because that's more work than it's worth. So, error messages aside, it's now cannonballs.

They do rather look like cannonballs, don't they? Well implemented, too.

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6) The spin attack already uses both sounds, just not very noticeable. I haven't played the game for a long time but I didn't really feel like it sounded right.

The two sounds are supposed to play simultaneously. If you've got an emulator, try disabling the first 6 sound channels to leave just those two. #8 is the one I mainly hear, and #7 is the one I can't. It's like a quieter version of the beam-shot from the sword.

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7) The masking of pots is something I'll look into. I kinda like the walking around them. It shouldn't interfere with your ability to grab them, but I could be wrong. I'll make a note on my list.

The last responder suggested square object masks. I'd go for almost square, perhaps 14x14 with very slightly rounded corners, since making them slightly easier to walk around is a nice touch. As long as it still feels like you're playing Zelda, why not improve the formula by a little bit? But getting stuck between them (which I didn't know about) and having trouble picking them up are significant problems.

This is not supposed to happen, right? It happened quite frequently to me and got pretty annoying. I'm playing on Vista, does that matter in any way?

No, it's not. Vista is pretty hard on games (I couldn't even play this game when I first got it myself) but it is Vista compatible. There is a feature called freeze when the game looses focus. I've enabled that so it may be fixed now. Beyond that, there's little I can do for you.

Pots should have square collision in my opinion. If you were walking against a row of pots you could get stuck between two pots. I mean, you could still move out again, but square collision would be better I think. You couldn't pick up pots either, could you? But you probably plan to add that anyway.

The last responder suggested square object masks. I'd go for almost square, perhaps 14x14 with very slightly rounded corners, since making them slightly easier to walk around is a nice touch. As long as it still feels like you're playing Zelda, why not improve the formula by a little bit? But getting stuck between them (which I didn't know about) and having trouble picking them up are significant problems.

I don't believe you really got stuck as in image over image. I'm that confident in my movement system. But it is true that walking in between two pots can make it feel like so, depending on which movement arrows you're pushing.

I'll go with goodnight's idea on this one. A square mask would not feel right when you walk around a stand alone container. If the current masks are too rounded, I'll try and find something in between.

On a side-note. Picking up containers can be done using different masks that walking collisions. I still haven't found usefull pick up animations for Link (the ones on spriter resource are terrible), so maybe it's time I posted a request on this forum. After I get those I'm going to make Link able to pick stuff up.

I'm not really sure what you mean. Knock-back against walls, enemies or something else. I guess I should add knock-back from enemies, but I'm not really sure how it was done in the original. Did it stop your movement every single time you hit an enemy?

As I recall mentioning (though maybe I didn't), I hadn't studied how/when enemies respawn. I'd suggest respawning them after traveling to a certain number of other rooms, rather than just when changing Game Maker rooms, IF the dungeons are rather large. Walking around through large floors with all the enemies beaten could get boring. A thought just occurred: it would be neat to actually SEE them respawn via some magic power, rather than just being there when you walk in.

Also consider the overworld; most if not all enemies respawn when you change areas.

Can't argue with that. This is somewhat of an hefty order though so it may take some time to implement. As for spawning enemies; I do want to add bones on the floor that turn into skeletons, but thats for the second dungeon.

With "target location" transitions, yes, extending the target just a bit might be the best fix, but he already seems to hit the target location a few pixels farther than expected, so it must be some other kind of bug. It was a one time occurrence for that door, but Link went back and forth a good 8 times or so before I freed him. It was the door between the room just after the 1st key, and the room to the left that's just a horizontal bridge with 3 pots.

If you're using division by frames to control Link's movement during the transition, then perhaps it was a perpetual rounding error. I'm not sure how your walking code works, but if it allows Link to be at a non-integer (x,y) position at any given time, then I'd suggest also rounding off his position before the transition begins.

This just in: I reenacted the bug by dashing at the upper part of the doorway so that Link passes through but still makes the collision noise. Took many tries but I made it work 3 times. Perhaps since Link is supposed to bounce back, the target position ends up getting pulled back a bit.

Also, where the 9 pots are just above that door, sometime in the midst of cutting them up and pressing D (I think) repeatedly to get infinite blue rupees out of one, Link's sword somehow got moved an entire 2 blocks to the left and 1 down. It stayed that way through every movement until quitting.

I haven't been able to recreate this bug but I did find some other really messed up things. For example, releasing your sword while doing a transition gets you stuck. That makes me wander what else I've missed so far.

Anyway. The story about rounding won't work. This routine is a stand alone from normal movement, making it easier to fix. It's just the Link objects moving from A to B with walking animation. The starting location isn't rounded but the speed isn't either. So moving left for A to B should make that in the and B is speed*pixels left of A, because speed/number_of_frames*number_of_frames = speed. If there is a rounding error it's so small it won't matter since movement is at least two pixels farther than needed.

The collision bit might be a reason but I have no idea how you managed to get it. When falling back through the air Link doesn't react with transition objects. I'll add in a line negating it, regardless. Let's hope that's the solution. You're a good glitch finder it seems.

The continues rupees is something I already found and fixed myself. At least that's what I thought. What demo where you playing when you got that? I don't suppose you could put something up on youtube or something?

The two sounds are supposed to play simultaneously. If you've got an emulator, try disabling the first 6 sound channels to leave just those two. #8 is the one I mainly hear, and #7 is the one I can't. It's like a quieter version of the beam-shot from the sword.

Sorry, no emulator. I'm using memory and youtube.

Now for some new info:I'm working on customizable controls, but I'm pretty sure not everybody is going to like the menu. The point was that I wanted one screen to change all your controls, since scrolling looked dreadfull. As you move next to an action the title mentions the button associated to that action. It then switches back and forth to explain which button needs to be pressed to if you want to change the button. It's still in progress but I'm curious for your input.

ENTER, SPACE and ESC are standard buttons for confirm, confirm and cancel. These can't be changed. I'll also an automatic save feature for the controls.

Update:Nope, didn't finish enough to justify a corrected demo by today (found a new appartment this weekend). I still need to add the "respawning" enemies. The rest is done, including the customizable controls. While I'm at it I'll also work on a global saving system which is completly new for me. And, if someone helps me with my sprite request, I should also be able to do the "pick up and throw" mechanism in about two or three weeks depending on free time. That should be enough for the next demo.

Even though I'm still busy moving, I did manage to work on the controls some more this weekend. There is one new noteworthy change I've made (the rest is just tweaks here and there). Esc only closes the program when you're at the starting screen. In every other situation it acts as the cancel button. The reason for this is the customizable controls. When you're in the procces of changing them the regular cancel button is no longer valid. With this change you can now also cancel in that situation since everything other than numbers, arrows or letters is not usable as a control button.

I'm currently working on respawning enemies/containers, but man ... that's a deceptively large amount of work. Anyway. I'll try and post a new demo tomorrow and I'd appreciate it if some of you could test the demo when it's out to see if I missed any obvious glitches.

I'm currently working on respawning enemies/containers, but man ... that's a deceptively large amount of work. Anyway. I'll try and post a new demo tomorrow and I'd appreciate it if some of you could test the demo when it's out to see if I missed any obvious glitches.

I have plenty of patience to REALLY test it hardcore. Also, I'm a perfectionist, which helps.

Btw, I will be testing it on WinXP. That said because there are some cases where games only have glitches on a certain OS. When it comes to testing, you can't really overdo it. Seriously though, I've found glitches in about half of the "professional" games (games that are sold) that I've played over the years. I always make it a point to test the heck out of any of my games before I consider them to be completed.

Anyway, this is a great project and I'd love to help out with it any way I can.

So I was just doing a little testing and I already found quite a few glitches. Here are 5 that I've found so far:

[1] Pressing the menu button while Link is walking up or down automatically on the stairs:Problem: Two stair sounds will play instead of one. Also, Link will sometimes reverse his direction. The menu will also shift up or down after the second sound plays, which seems to only happen when you press the menu button at the very bottom or top of the stairs.Fix: The easiest fix would be to disable the menu while walking on stairs. The original game does this anyway. Actually, it pauses EVERYTHING in ALL auto transitions, even enemies, and it locks ALL buttons.

[2] Pressing the sword button while Link is walking up or down automatically on the stairs:Problem: Two stair sounds will play, Link's sword sound will play but he does not slash his sword and Link will also freeze in place for a short time. After Link freezes, he will either continue walking upward or he will reverse direction.There may be other keys that have a similar effect as in these first two glitches.Fix: Obvious. Make sure Link can't do anything in the middle of auto-walking.

[3] Poking wall:Problem: If you're powering up your sword (holding the sword button) and holding a directional key while poking a wall, then if you let off of the sword key while still pressing that directional key into the wall, Link will continue to hold his sword out, poking the wall. His sword will continue to charge up when doing this, even though you are no longer pressing the sword key.Fix: Not sure how you're coding this so I haven't got much of an idea how to fix it.However, I did notice that, in the original, poking the wall does not reset your powering up of the sword like you have it do in your game. Instead, the original game pauses the powering up for a short time every time you tap the wall, then it continues to power up. Just in case you want to make it EXACTLY like the original. If not, your way is totally fine.

[4] Spin attack sparks:Problem: When doing a spin attack underneath a layer (i.e. floor above you) you will see the sword sparks above that layer.Fix: Should be just a simple depth problem. On an interesting note, I found that the original game actually had a problem with depth in certain areas as well, but usually when swimming in the water. I just seem to stumble upon these minor things for some reason. ^_^

[5] Room scrolling:Problem: If you press the sword or menu key when scrolling/transitioning into another room, BAD BAD things happen.Fix: Don't let any key work during any auto scroll or walk.

Hope that helps! Even with all those glitches, I actually found your tech demo surprisingly solid. A lot of people don't realize just how complex something like this can be. Seriously, this demo is great. I'll continue testing and I'll let you know if I find more glitches.

[1] Pressing the menu button while Link is walking up or down automatically on the stairs:Problem: Two stair sounds will play instead of one. Also, Link will sometimes reverse his direction. The menu will also shift up or down after the second sound plays, which seems to only happen when you press the menu button at the very bottom or top of the stairs.Fix: The easiest fix would be to disable the menu while walking on stairs. The original game does this anyway. Actually, it pauses EVERYTHING in ALL auto transitions, even enemies, and it locks ALL buttons.

Oops, that one slipped through. I already fixed the sword vs stairs.At first I made it like in the original, locking everything while you were moving on the stairs. After thinking about it for a while I felt that it was unnecessarily unrealistic, so I made it so that enemies etc. continues in realtime. The same also goes for jumping from ledges and during room transitions. For these events I'm using a variable called Link_Status_Special. Glitches like this appear when I forget to lock functions if Link_Status_Special does not have it's default value.

[2] Pressing the sword button while Link is walking up or down automatically on the stairs:Problem: Two stair sounds will play, Link's sword sound will play but he does not slash his sword and Link will also freeze in place for a short time. After Link freezes, he will either continue walking upward or he will reverse direction.There may be other keys that have a similar effect as in these first two glitches.Fix: Obvious. Make sure Link can't do anything in the middle of auto-walking.

[3] Poking wall:Problem: If you're powering up your sword (holding the sword button) and holding a directional key while poking a wall, then if you let off of the sword key while still pressing that directional key into the wall, Link will continue to hold his sword out, poking the wall. His sword will continue to charge up when doing this, even though you are no longer pressing the sword key.Fix: Not sure how you're coding this so I haven't got much of an idea how to fix it.However, I did notice that, in the original, poking the wall does not reset your powering up of the sword like you have it do in your game. Instead, the original game pauses the powering up for a short time every time you tap the wall, then it continues to power up. Just in case you want to make it EXACTLY like the original. If not, your way is totally fine.

Hhmm. Interesting. I'll have to look into it, but it doesn't look to complicated to fix. My guess is that releasing the sword button negates charging, but not (yet) poking. I'm using a single variable called Link_Status for all of link's actions. It should be just a matter of adding a new condition to releasing the sword button. "If released while poking do the same as when released while charging", or something similar.Continuing to charge while poking would cause some small problems I'd need to overcome so I'll leave it as it is.

[4] Spin attack sparks:Problem: When doing a spin attack underneath a layer (i.e. floor above you) you will see the sword sparks above that layer.Fix: Should be just a simple depth problem. On an interesting note, I found that the original game actually had a problem with depth in certain areas as well, but usually when swimming in the water. I just seem to stumble upon these minor things for some reason. ^_^

Okay, that shouldn't be too much trouble to fix. This is something left over from creating two walking depths. This is just the kind of stuff I wouldn't find on my own.

Hope that helps! Even with all those glitches, I actually found your tech demo surprisingly solid. A lot of people don't realize just how complex something like this can be. Seriously, this demo is great. I'll continue testing and I'll let you know if I find more glitches.

I'll get on these glitches before I release the next demo. This will means some delay, but oh well. At least the next one will be glitch-free (*fingers crossed*)